that I was totally
free from vanity; I must therefore trust to that to prevent my
appearing vain during this recital.

As soon as I was alone I reflected with a secret satisfaction
that the Princess Amelie, after seeing my portrait, painted five
or six years ago, had inquired after "her cousin of the olden
time."

Nothing could be more absurd than to build the slightest hope on
so trivial a circumstance, I acknowledge; but I always treat you
with the most perfect confidence, and I acknowledge that this
trifling circumstance delighted me.

No doubt the praise I had just heard bestowed on the princess by
so grave and austere a person as my aunt, by raising her in my
estimation, rendered this circumstance more agreeable.

Why should I tell you? The hopes I conceived from this trifling
event were so mad that, now that I look back more calmly on the
past, I ask myself how I could have indulged in ideas that must
have ended in my destruction.

Although related to the grand duke, and always treated by him
with the greatest kindness, yet it was impossible to entertain
the slightest hope of a marriage with the princess; even had she
returned my affection it would still have been impossible. Our
family holds an honourable position, but it is poor when
compared with the grand duke, the richest prince of the German
confederation; and besides, I was only one and twenty, a simple
captain in the guards, without any reputation or any position.
Never could the grand duke think of me as a suitor for his
daughter.

All these reflections ought to have saved me from a passion I
did not as yet feel, but of which I had a strange presentiment.

Alas! I rather gave way to fresh puerilities; I wore on my
finger a ring that Thecla (the countess of whom I have so often
spoken) had given me, although this souvenir of a boyish love
could not have much embarrassed me. I sacrificed it to my new
flame, and, opening the window, I cast the ring into the waves
of the river that flowed beneath.

I have no need to tell you what a night I passed, you can
imagine; I knew the princess was very beautiful; I sought to
picture to myself her features, her air, her manner, her figure,
the sound of her voice; and thinking of my portrait which she
had noticed I recollected that the artist had flatt